Shakespeare, Sex and the Print Revolution

Author: Williams, Gordon

English

Published on 1 April 1996 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 288 pages, bibliography, index
215 x 142 x 16 | 354g

This book investigates how the sexual element in Shakespeare's works in complicated and compromised by the impact of print. Whether the issue is one of censorship and evasion or sexual redefinition, the fact that Shakespeare wrote in the first century of popular print is crucial. Out of the newly-accesible classical canon he creates a reconstituted idea pf the sexual temptress; and out of Counter-Reformation propaganda he fashions his own complex thinking about the prostitute. Shakespeare's theatrical scripts, meeting-ground for the spoken and written word, contribute powerfully to those socio-sexual debates which had been re-energised by print. Dr Williams teaches at the University of Wales, Lampeter. His previous book was A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature (Athlone, 1994) and forthcoming is a Glossary of Shakespeare's Sexual Usage (Athlone, 1997).